With the support of the United Auto Workers, the three auto giants have set up the Southeast Michigan e-Prescribing Initiative (SEMI) in collaboration with three Michigan health care insurers: Henry Ford Health System, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Health Alliance Plan. They also had help from electronic prescribing technology providers such as RxHub LLC and pharmacy benefit manager Medco Health Solutions.
It is hoped that as many as 17,000 physicians will have the opportunity to join the program, which intends to replace handwritten prescriptions with an electronic system that gives physicians real-time access to important safety and coverage information.
The technology is also expected to decrease administrative costs, which according to a 2003 Medco study may reach a 42% reduction in the number of pharmacy calls to the physicians’ office and a 30% reduction in calls related to prescription illegibility.
As part of the agreement, the health plans and employers, in consultation with Medco, will develop a secure, integrated patient data infrastructure that checks patient prescription and medical data for potential errors during the prescription process. This will provide both ambulatory and institutional clinicians with access to relevant patient data in a secure environment.
The initiative comes as government researchers report that the use of IT such as e-prescribing may eliminate up to two million drug errors caused by illegible handwriting. Speculation also suggests that the technology could reduce billions of dollars in costs through the removal of inefficient processes and increasing the use of cheaper drug substitutes.
The federal government has also been keen to spread awareness of this technology through pilot projects leading up to the Medicare program that will start in 2006 and proposing regulations to support e-prescribing.
